an asteroid will barrel towards earth in a week.
doomsday asteroid XE4 will make its possible approach on earth on late sunday evening, may 26. scientists tracking the asteroid at nasa's jet propulsion laboratory predict an 8.37pm greenwich mean timezone flyby. during this transit, the killer asteroid might zip by from a distance of 0.99 lunar distances or 237,037 miles from earth. if nasa's astronomers are correct in their size estimate, there is a good reason to keep a watchful eye on the space rock.
26th of may. jihoon looks at the dates on his wrist. it's already the 18th, and it's been a day since the date plastered on his wrist passed. one day. he still hasn't seen his soulmate and now a space rock will be hitting earth anytime soon. sounds great.
the boy lets out a huge sigh and throws himself back on the bed. why does earth have to be a big target with big gravity? imagine having this asteroid strike the planet at 30,000 mph. everyone would be dead for sure and that's just unfair for jihoon. when he got his date on his seventeenth birthday (one for his soulmate), his mother told him that he would meet the love of his life on a beautiful springtime in may.
he didn't expect things to take a turn like this though. stupid asteroid.
coffee packets and crumpled papers are scattered all over his desk. how embarrassing, he says to himself upon seeing the mess he still has no energy to clean. well, what's the use if his roommate had probably seen it already? he hasn't seen him yet but this morning he saw an unfamiliar luggage near the bed so that confirms it. and they're probably on different shifts in school so it would be really hard for them to meet each other, unless jihoon stays up to wait for him to get home.
but he has classes at night and he has to sleep around noon. damn it.
that morning, he finally forces himself to get back to studying the asteroid that will have its flyby in a few days, with a possibility of clashing with earth. they were given an assignment to do their research and analyze shit using the tools of modern theoretical physics. it's hard to be an astrophysics major, alright. sometimes jihoon wonders why he agreed to take this course.
"holy fuck," he curses, seeing on his screen that the asteroid is a mile in diameter so that means that it would most likely wipe out life on earth. it's so big that the professionals should really pay attention to its trajectory. his fingers anxiously tap on the desk while reading articles, that he barely even noticed the time. about three hours have gone by and the sun is already at its peak.
"what the fuck, if i'm dying on the 26th already, i shouldn't be working on this assignment anymore," he mumbles.
but sucks to be him, he still has to do his work even if he has only a few days left to live.
around five in the afternoon, jihoon wakes up to prepare for school. he lazily rolls off the bed and sees the upper bunk occupied by a sleeping boy. the room is all cleaned up too, especially his study table. now that's embarrassing, he muses. he can't believe the boy had to clean up on their first day of being roommates.
ever since jihoon got the dates on his wrist, he promised himself that he would always write lovely things to his soulmate until the day they meet. but because he never met his lover on the 17th, he's getting a little hesitant about the whole thing.
well, what can he do if the universe decides that their story should go this way?